


Lost and Found

by desticockles



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desticockles/pseuds/desticockles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wakes up in a dingy motel room and can't seem to find one of his most prized possessions. He may or may not overreact a bit, but can you blame him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beekeepercain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/gifts).



Dean woke up tangled in the sheets of the motel bed, still tired, sweaty, in need of a shower. But Dean didn’t want to move, all his muscles aching from last night’s hunt, and each move he made burned and scratched beneath his skin. The traces of a mild hangover weren’t much help either, and maybe he should have listened to Sam when he told Dean he’d had enough to drink. When Sam tossed a pillow at him, Dean didn’t respond, just curled tighter around his pillow, arms wrapped around it protectively. Then he was hit with a pair of jeans, which were heavier, but he pretends he doesn’t notice and rubs his cheek against the pillow. The moment that a heavy shoe makes contact with his shoulder he groans and turns over onto his back, head turned towards Sam to glare at him with sleep-fogged eyes.

“Dean, get up, we have to go soon.” Sam is tying the laces on the shoe he hadn’t thrown at Dean, his bag packed and sitting at his feet.

“Gimme’ a minute, jeez…” Dean grumbles, rolling over again. He hears Sam huff and stand to retrieve his shoe. Sam smacks Dean’s leg with his shoe, hard, and returns to the edge of his bed to put the shoe on.

“Dean...” Sam ordered, bending to grab his bag from the floor.

“Fine, shut up,” Dean growled, pushing himself up to sit up in the bed with a grunt. He rubbed at the back of his neck, massaging the sore muscles, and felt the leather cord of his amulet slide weightlessly around his neck beneath his hand. His heart dropped and he felt a sudden wave of panic wash over him. He reached for the amulet, feeling all along the cord in the hopes that he might find the body-warmed metal with his fumbling fingers. Nothing. It was gone. Sam had just gone out to the Impala to get ready to go, and Dean was thankful for that because if Sam had seen the way he panicked…

Dean felt around the in blankets, breaths coming out shallow and fast, heart beating faster than he thought it should be in such a stupid situation. He hadn’t felt this much worry in a long time, even during a hunt. He would have been scolding himself for overreacting if it weren’t for the fact that he still couldn’t find it after he had torn all the sheets from the bed and was now on his hands and knees, searching the floor and under the bed for the worn piece of metal. He stood and shook out his shirt, hoping it might have gotten caught in the fabric. And after he had searched himself thoroughly, he tried to retrace his steps from the previous night. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t have any idea when or where he might have been when he lost it. It could be anywhere.

He had to take a moment to just breathe, think, stop freaking out. If it had been anything else he would have been fine - except for his dad’s journal or the keys to the Impala - but it was his amulet; it was his gift from Sam. And without it he felt utterly naked and surprisingly empty. The light weight of the thing hanging on his neck was something he had gotten so used to over the years, and to think that he might not ever feel that weight on his neck, the warm metal on his chest again, made him feel like the world was ending. It was almost as if he was suspended in time, each second dragging on to feel like minutes, and by the time Sam came back into the room and found Dean crouched in a pile of sheets on the floor it had been what felt like an hour.

“Dean… What are you doing?” Sam asked, watching from the doorway. Dean didn’t turn to look at him, just kept pulling at the sheets in the hopes that eventually there would be the clink of metal against the floor and he could relax again. He couldn’t lose it. He just couldn’t. Sam’s voice came back, almost too loud, “Dean?”

“I can’t find it.” Dean muttered, flinging a sheet back onto the bed and continuing his search.

“Can’t find what?”

“It… My… The, you know,” Dean tried, searching desperately with restless hands, “you know.”

“No, Dean, I don’t know.”

“The… DAMMIT,” Dean curled his fists in the sheets in frustration, flinging them away from himself and reaching to pull at the leather cord around his neck. “This!”

“Oh. Dean, jesus, calm down…”

“No, I can’t find it, I can’t leave it in some shitty motel room for a maid to find, it’s important to me. God, what if it isn’t even here? Then what do I do?” Dean was rambling, searching the floor again. “I could’a lost it on the hunt, or at the bar…”

“Dean, seriously, it’s okay…”

“No,” Dean interrupted him, accidentally bumping his head on the bed frame. He hissed in pain and rubbed at the back of his head, still frantically scanning the room with his eyes. He heard Sam sigh from behind him and turned to glare up at him, but instead he was met by Sam’s hand held out to him. He stared at it dubiously, instinctually reeling back a bit.

“You were pretty drunk last night, Dean. You were mumbling something about how you didn’t understand what it was supposed to do and pulled it off.” Sam grabbed Dean’s hand and put the little bronze amulet in the palm of his hand, “You threw it at me and I kept it in my coat pocket.”

“Oh.” Dean breathed, staring down at the amulet in his hand. Just touching it - hell, even just seeing it - made him feel relaxed again. He worked the cord from around his neck and reattached the amulet without a word. He felt like a complete idiot. But then he had to wonder, what was it’s real purpose? It never protected him from danger, obviously, and if it was a curse he couldn’t tell. So, what was it good for? Besides being a constant reminder of Sam and a warm weight against Dean’s chest that made him at least feel safer, it seemed to be no more than a hunk of metal on a string. Somehow, though, he knew deep down that there was something more to it, an energy that he could feel, a tingling feeling wherever the amulet touched his skin, a feeling that he had come to think of as normal. He never noticed it until it was gone, and then he missed it. It had to mean something, he thought.

“Now, are you going to get dressed or am I leaving without you?” Sam asked, playfully smacking Dean’s arm and effectively breaking him out of his thoughts. Dean rolled his eyes and stood to get dressed, now with the warm, light weight of his amulet hanging around his neck and pulling at the strings of his mind. He couldn’t help but wonder what it was for, no matter how many times he told himself that there was not a purpose, that it was just a gift, a keepsake, a treasure. The tingling sensation he felt where it laid against his chest told him otherwise, but he had to convince himself that he might never know. Instead of worrying about it, he got in the Impala with Sam and drove for hours while Sam searched through various newspapers in the passenger seat, and eventually he forgot about the electric buzz of the metal on his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> I may have written this because I had a similar experience…   
> Okay, I did… But I still haven't found mine.  
> Dean is lucky. Or maybe it's fate? I don't know.


End file.
